WINTER 2010Barry Sloane
Clerk of QuarterDianne and I love to cook (we courted in the kitchen), and one of our favorite hangouts is the enchanted Asian grocery store on Washington and 6th in Philadelphia. Every time we go there, we discover another culinary delight. We are always bedazzled by the food products we don’t know about and what we learn by talking to the folks who do know what these ingredients are. The people here are friendly and even those who don’t speak English are eager to share. The Vietnamese lady who tried to explain to Dianne how to cook the stewing chicken with her family recipe is one example. I have no idea what the woman was saying—Oh barriers of language!—but the fact that she was trying to share her recipe says that it is good and therefore, I would love to learn it. More importantly, she wanted to share her pride, joy, and love.
This store gives the patrons a gift when they check out. It could be nuóc mám (fish sauce) or noodles, but this time it was Viet coffee. I have long been a fan of Vietnamese coffee, but have never seen it packaged from Vietnam. This particular coffee was packaged in Ho Chi Minh City— Saigon, for those of us who remember when Vietnam was in the headlines instead of Iraq or Afghanistan.
So here we are 36 years after our evacuation from Vietnam and 10 years after we started another unwinnable war (the Greeks, Persians, Mongols, British, and Soviets before us) in Afghanistan. I have to wonder: In 30 years will we heal our relationships with the Afghanis as we are with the Vietnamese? Will one of us again be in a grocery store exchanging recipes with our former enemy? Will we be fighting a new enemy then? As the song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” asks, “When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”
It seems to me we could bypass the war process and go straight to sharing food with one another. Wouldn’t that be grand?
And now for the best coffee you’ll ever taste … thanks to our former enemies.
Like Turkish coffee and espresso, making Vietnamese coffee involves its own little secrets and rituals. The coffee, called ca phe, is actually brewed in a miniature drip pot that sits on top of your coffee cup. The “cup” is more usually a glass, because Vietnamese coffee is as much a treat for the eyes as it is for the tongue. The coffee often has chicory and a reasonable substitution is Luzianne coffee with chicory or Café DuMond coffee available in Asian grocery stores and some gourmet shops. The other secret is condensed (not evaporated) milk. It is great on ice! For the complete recipe go to http://coffeefaq.com/site/node/58
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Friday, November 19, 2010 at 03:45 AM
